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I really shouldn't be doing other people's homework, but I decided to pull the numbers on age anyway.
Here's the data on Wyoming County, NY (NY's most Republican County):
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Age distribution was 24.10% under the age of 18, 8.20% from 18 to 24, 32.80% from 25 to 44, 22.80% from 45 to 64, and 12.20% who were 65 years of age or older.
Here's the data on Bedford County, PA (PA's most Republican county):
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In the county, the population was spread out with 23.60% under the age of 18, 7.20% from 18 to 24, 28.10% from 25 to 44, 24.60% from 45 to 64, and 16.50% who were 65 years of age or older.
Although Bedford County has more seniors, this doesn't account for the 14 point difference between the two counties.
Besides, the state's demographic composition is what it is. You just can't say "Well, if Pennsylvania were younger/richer/more educated, it would be as liberal as Massachusetts!" A conservative could always turn around and say that if the state didn't have so many blacks, gays, Hispanics and young people, then it would be more conservative than what it is.
For the record, if I were Shaquille O'Neal's size, I'd be a millionaire.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 10-16-2013 at 12:41 PM..
In Brooklyn the population was spread out with 26.9% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 30.8% from 25 to 44, 20.6% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who are 65 years of age or older.
Brooklyn voted 81% Democratic in 2012. But I must admit: this is cherrypicking. It's not really fair to say that Brooklyn is more liberal than Western Pennsylvania because if Western PA had the same percentage of Millenials, Blacks, Hispanics, Jews and Gays, then it would be every bit as liberal. The two places are practically the same once you eliminate those groups.
Edit: What's interesting is that Maine has a higher percentage of senior citizens than Pennsylvania. Yet the state is far more socially liberal than PA. Why do you suspect that is?
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
Here are the stats for Brooklyn.
Edit: What's interesting is that Maine has a higher percentage of senior citizens than Pennsylvania. Yet the state is far more socially liberal than PA. Why do you suspect that is?
Where is PA growing younger and older and which age groups vote the most in each state? Voter turnout is another issue you are missing in your diatribe because you are maybe forgetting that currently only 58% of the voting age population votes in PA, which is the lowest since 2000.
Also, 59% of all PA voters in the last presidential election were over the age of 45, with 40% being over the age of 55. (This information can be found from the first link, there is an Excel document)
Voter turnout and the age of voters is a huge issue in regards to this argument. PA is in the bottom half of the U.S. for voter turnout and dropping. Additionally, many of the PA voters are older and this influences the election results and the overall perceived political leanings of the state. I wonder what the election results would look like in PA if more younger people voted and if 70+% of the population voted.
Where is PA growing younger and older and which age groups vote the most in each state?
Why don't you do that research and get back to us? I would imagine that PA's urban areas are getting younger and its rural areas older. However, that's not unique to Pennsylvania. That's a nationwide (perhaps even a global) phenomenon.
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Originally Posted by trackstar13
Voter turnout is another issue you are missing in your diatribe because you are maybe forgetting that currently only 58% of the voting age population votes in PA, which is the lowest since 2000.
The chart I posted was generated from data gathered from pre-election surveys. That means that pollsters generate a sample and poll people in these states who may or may not vote. So the survey is reflecting more than just the opinion of people who actually vote. It reflects the opinion of the sample. There goes another one of your arguments down the toilet.
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David Park and I made these graphs from the Annenberg pre-election survey from 2000 (with its huge sample size), creating indexes based on issue opinions, giving each respondent an economic and social ideology score.
And what does this have to do with the ruralcounties? New York has even lower voter turnout than Pennsylvania. Yet we don't see any of its rural counties voting for Republicans by 77-23 margins. When these counties in rural Pennsylvania go 77% Republican, it's not because Democrats failed to show up. Those counties are really that Republican. So no, low voter turnout is not the reason why so many counties in Pennsylvania are so red. Turnout tends to be a problem with minorities and younger people. Both are in short supply in the rural areas of the Northeast and Midwest.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 10-16-2013 at 04:03 PM..
To be fair we don't know that those counties in MN, WI, and MI are more liberal; they are more democratic when it comes to voting. Semantics? I don't think so.
And that's why I posted the chart based on the Annenberg data. These people were polled and asked specific questions. And Pennsylvania scored higher on social conservatism than Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. Based on the results of the surveys, we can infer that these counties are indeed more liberal. If not, then who are the people who are driving the social conservatism scores way down? I would not think that the Twin Cities, Milwaukee or Detroit are several orders of magnitude more liberal than Philadelphia. That's not a logical inference.
And let's use common sense here. A state that has 27 counties that go 60%+ for Mitt Romney is more conservative than a state that has 3. If we were talking about Alabama or Georgia, then this data would be fair game, and everyone would be pointing out how conservative those states are based on their election results. But since we're talking about Pennsylvania, a northern state, all of a sudden everyone wants to think otherwise. That's hypocritical.
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Originally Posted by jack office
Good old fashion New England self acceptance?
Maine is the reverse of Pennsylvania. Conservative on economic issues. Liberal on social issues. Same thing with New Hampshire.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 10-16-2013 at 04:01 PM..
Number of Pennsylvania counties voting 60%+ Republican = 20
Number of Pennsylvania counties voting 70%+ Republican = 7
And yet...
Number of Alabama counties voting 60%+ Republican: 38 (56.7%)
Number of Alabama counties voting 70%+ Republican: 26 (38.8%)
Number of Alabama counties voting 80%+ Republican: 7 (10.4%)
Number of Kentucky counties voting 60%+ Republican: 98 (81.7%)
Number of Kentucky counties voting 70%+ Republican: 35 (29.2%)
Number of Kentucky counties voting 80%+ Republican: 12 (10.0%)
Pennsylvania and Alabama both have 67 counties, but Alabama has an identical number of 80%+ Romney counties as Pennsylvania does 70%+ Romney counties. And this is despite the fact that Alabama has 10 counties with a majority black population, and probably at least a couple more with a plurality black population. Alabama is more than twice as black as Pennsylvania (26.2% versus 11.3%) but was still "safe" for Mitt Romney in 2012. As for Kentucky, it had more than double the proportion of 60%+ Romney counties as Pennsylvania, and a virtually identical proportion of 80%+ Romney counties as Pennsylvania had 70%+ Romney counties.
It's also worth noting that Pennsylvania is the most carbonaceous state east of the Mississippi River. It has oil; it has coal, and it has natural gas. Take a look at a map of the Marcellus Shale field, and notice how most of Pennsylvania sits on top of it, and Pittsburgh is near the geographic center of it. For that matter, western Pennsylvania also shares the Utica Shale field with eastern Ohio. And anecdotally, some of the gas drillers in Butler County have struck oil on the way down to the gas. There's been a lot of energy industry activity in Pennsylvania since 2008, and most of the players have either established or expanded their management presence in the Pittsburgh area. Energy industry workers overwhelmingly vote Republican, and many (most?) consider Barack Obama's energy and environmental policies to be too restrictive to their business and their livelihoods. Pittsburgh is becoming a regional epicenter for the energy industry, so don't be surprised if Pittsburgh is somewhat more Republican than most major metropolitan areas. Houston is one of the most dynamic and diverse metropolitan areas in the United States, yet Barack Obama won Harris County -- the third-most populous county in the United States -- by a whopping 585 votes last year.
The tendency for energy workers to vote Republican helps explain Kentucky's Republican tendencies to an extent, but not to the degree that it'd seem. Coal is really all they have; the Marcellus and Utica Shale fields don't make it down that far, and there's not much oil either. Furthermore, there's an underlying resentment in eastern Kentucky that coal mining hasn't had much local economic benefit. There are some mining jobs, but management jobs are scarce, and most of the major players are headquartered in other states, including Pennsylvania. And Alabama has virtually nothing that can be mined or drilled for, so something else altogether has to explain their Republican tendencies.
So we are less socially conservative than AL? That isn't news...
It is news, considering people still regurgitate James Carville's quip from 21 years ago as if it has some basis in reality today. When Alabama has as many counties giving 80%+ of their vote to Mitt Romney as Pennsylvania has giving 70%+ of their vote to him, that ought to illustrate that the "Alabama without the blacks" description is bull****. If Pennsylvania had the proportion of rural black residents that Alabama does, then Mitt Romney would be lucky to get 60%+ of the vote in any county in Pennsylvania.
Maine is the reverse of Pennsylvania. Conservative on economic issues. Liberal on social issues. Same thing with New Hampshire.
We've already established, based on your own data, that Pennsylvania is -- at the very least -- socially moderate. Again, please consult the Annenberg data and note that PA is very close to zero on the social scale. I think that's being generous since we've already pointed out how woefully outdated 13-year old numbers are.
I think you're also neglecting to consider that the Northeast used to a Republican bastion, and it was that way for a very, very long time. It's only relatively recent that it's become solidly Democratic.
I honestly don't know why the more rural parts of the state haven't made at least some transition to being more Democratic -- much like Upstate NY or Northern Maine -- because the demographics aren't that different. However, I would hypothesize that a lot of does, indeed, have to do with long-standing tradition and voting patterns that have held for generations. Hence, they're more inclined to be aligned with the old school Republican Party.
We've already established, based on your own data, that Pennsylvania is -- at the very least -- socially moderate.
I think the data establishes that Pennsylvania is polarized. There are two Pennsylvanias: one that is rather liberal and one that's fairly conservative. The liberal Pennsylvania triumphs in presidential election years whereas the conservative Pennsylvania wins more often than not in midterm election years. A similar dynamic exists in Virginia.
And no, this is not "the same as every other state" where rural counties are more conservative than urban counties. The difference between, say, New York and Pennsylvania is that the urban areas are a bigger key to a Democratic victory in the latter (odd, right?). If you removed all of the urban counties from New York State, you would have a state that would be only marginally Republican. Maybe a 55-45 split overall. If you removed all of the urban counties from Pennsylvania, you'd have a state that's overwhelmingly Republican. It would be closer to a 68-32 split. And that's fairly similar to what we see in West Virginia (which doesn't have many AAs). Incidentally, West Virginia had one of the highest scores on the social conservatism spectrum, and yet it had fewer 70%+ Republican counties than Western Pennsylvania. That's something to think about.
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Originally Posted by Duderino
Again, please consult the Annenberg data and note that PA is very close to zero on the social scale.
I've already consulted the data. I posted it, remember? Even with very Democratic areas like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley, the state was still more socially conservative than Virginia in 2000. The year is important to highlight because the Virginia of 2000 is not the Virginia of 2013. The Virginia of 2000 voted for GWB by a margin of 52-44. So if Pennsylvania outscored Virginia in terms of social conservatism, then that's indicative of a lot of conservative voters outside of the Big Blue cities.
And unlike Virginia, Pennsylvania is not witnessing explosive population growth. Virginia is adding about three times as many residents in absolute numbers as Pennsylvania. That notwithstanding, Virginia is still a socially conservative state.
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Originally Posted by Duderino
I think that's being generous since we've already pointed out how woefully outdated 13-year old numbers are.
What would make you suspect that the state has shifted any further left on social issues when more people are identifying as conservative than at any point in the past three decades? Sure, you could argue that these people are just becoming more fiscally conservative, but either way, that doesn't bode well for your theory that Pennsylvania is being turned inside out by Millennials and Creatives. Millennials and Creatives tend not to be fiscal conservatives.
The only "evidence" you've really offered are gay marriage polls, which really don't mean a lot since public opinion on that issue has shifted dramatically in all states. 49% of Tennesseans, for example, support gay marriage compared to 54% of Pennsylvanians. Yet you don't hear anything about Tennessee changing much on abortion or gun rights. Even 48% of Texans favor same sex marriage. And we know that Texas is still very much a socially conservative state. Just look at its voting pattern in the last election.
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Originally Posted by Duderino
I think you're also neglecting to consider that the Northeast used to a Republican bastion, and it was that way for a very, very long time. It's only relatively recent that it's become solidly Democratic.
This is a ridiculous argument. This is about as bad as today's Republicans arguing that they "freed the slaves." The Northeast voted differently back then because the Republican Party was different. The party alignment we see today has been in place since Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took control of the House in 1994.
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Originally Posted by Duderino
I honestly don't know why the more rural parts of the state haven't made at least some transition to being more Democratic -- much like Upstate NY or Northern Maine -- because the demographics aren't that different. However, I would hypothesize that a lot of does, indeed, have to do with long-standing tradition and voting patterns that have held for generations. Hence, they're more inclined to be aligned with the old school Republican Party.
Huh? That's completely wrong. Much of Western Pennsylvania was aligned with the Democratic Party. Look at each election beginning with Bush, Sr. in 1988 to see how that area has become considerably more red. A big chunk of Western Pennsylvania voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988. And they gave even greater support to Bill Clinton in 1992. By 2004, only five counties in Western Pennsylvania voted for John Kerry. Today, Western PA is overwhelmingly Republican. So it's not that these voters are caught up in old voting patterns. They've clearly drifted towards the Republican Party now that unions don't have the same presence they once did.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 10-17-2013 at 09:14 AM..
Between 2004 and 2012, support for same sex marriage in Alabama increased by 16 percentage points. In South Carolina, it increased by 14. In Mississippi, it increased by 14. In Georgia, it increased by 15. In Tennessee, support increased by 14 percent and then increased by a whopping 17 percent in one year! So what's going on? Are these states becoming more like Massachusetts? At the rate support for gay marriage is increasing in these states, a full majority will be in favor of it within the next decade or so (some even sooner).
Nate Silver provides a bit of insight here.
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Yeah. I mean, sometimes on economic issues or issues related to domestic policy where there are events that intervene and rapidly change opinion, about a war or something. But about social issues, I mean, if you look at the numbers on abortion they've been pretty much the same for decades. Maybe on gun rights, there's been some movement toward the pro-Second Amendment side, but not as rapidly as you see on gay rights issues or on gay marriage in particular.
So while people are becoming more accepting of gay marriage (just as they became more of accepting of blacks in their schools and pools), they are not necessarily becoming more liberal on other social issues such as abortion, gun rights or immigration. The infamous Jesse Helms "Hands" commercial would be as effective in Western Pennsylvania today as it's ever been.
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